Does the MSO Project Add to an Already Overcrowded Milwaukee Theater Market?

In many ways, Milwaukee would seem blessed by its abundance of theaters and performance venues for both the fine and popular arts.

There’s the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts with its three main venues: Uihlein Hall (2,305 seats), Todd Wehr Theater (496 seats) and Wilson Theater at Vogel Hall (465 seats). Just a block away, there’s the Milwaukee Repertory Theater with three more venues: Quadracci Powerhouse with 720 seats, Stiemke Studio (205 seats) and Stackner Cabaret (124 seats). We can also add the Miller High Life Theater (formerly the Milwaukee Theatre) with more than 4,000 seats; the Broadway Theatre Center’s Cabot Theatre (358 seats) and Studio Theatre (99 seats); Next Act Theatre (152 seats); and the Tenth Street Theatre with its 99 seats.

It’s a long list, and it’s by no means exhaustive. For one thing, it doesn’t consider the many spots that bring in mostly “popular” touring acts: the Pabst Theater, Riverside Theater, The Rave, Potawatomi Hotel and Casino’s Northern Lights Theatre, UW Panther Arena, Shank Hall and, of course, the various performance stages at the Summerfest grounds. It’s also a list that’s about to get a little longer.

The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (MSO) completed its acquisition in late 2017 of the Warner Grand Theatre, 212 W. Wisconsin Ave., which has been closed since 1995. When the Warner Grand Theatre renovation is completed in 2020, Milwaukee will have an additional 1,750 seats for concertgoers.

Symphony officials have long said having their own venue would allow them to schedule more performances throughout the year and book traveling acts further in advance. Yet, their decision to move into a new theater comes at a time of stagnant support for fine arts groups, which tend to rely not exclusively on ticket sales but also government aid and private donations to pay for both building projects and their day-to-day operations.

Recouping the Loss

Paul Mathews, president of the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts, has made it no secret that he wishes the Symphony were staying at the Marcus Center, where it now shares venue space with Milwaukee Ballet, Florentine Opera and touring Broadway productions. Mathews calculates the Symphony’s departure will blow an $850,000 hole into the Marcus Center’s annual operating budget.

Mathews said his colleagues and he are working on a plan to recoup as much of that as they can and that the MSO’s departure will give them about 22 more weeks to fill in any given year.

The Marcus Center is a bit unusual among arts organizations in that it secures about 85% of its money from “earned income”—that is, ticket sales, parking fees, sales of food and drink at events, and venue rentals. Still, even with those sources of revenue, the Marcus Center, like most arts organizations, struggles with finding money for building repairs and improvements.

The center now gets help for capital projects from Milwaukee County, but that money is starting to be stretched thin. Officials are now scrambling to find a way to pay for a roughly $350 million replacement of the county’s 90-year-old Safety Building, a structure housing court offices and courtrooms that has long been due for an overhaul.

Mathews said he thinks local officials will eventually have to consider adopting a special tax to support arts institutions. He said this could come in many forms. His own preference is for a sales tax, since it would be paid not only by people living in the county but also visitors coming in for arts performances, sports and other events. “The Marcus Center is a regional if not statewide organization,” he said. “The majority of our patrons are now coming from outside Milwaukee County and from northern Illinois.”

Who Pays for the Arts?

Milwaukee is, of course, not the only city where people are struggling with finding ways to support performance venues. Nor is the larger question of “Who will pay for the arts?” especially new.

In an essay first published in 1986 and titled “A Surfeit of Fine Art,” cultural historian Jacques Barzun wrote a statement that could easily have been made about Milwaukee:

“In this year, in any given year, the budgets of the federal and state agencies that support the arts are to be cut again. Yet one continues to hear of one more dance group being formed, yet another chamber group making its debut, newborn theater companies striving to lure audiences, festivals and exhibits being organized.”

In a report released four years ago, the Public Policy Forum (now the Wisconsin Policy Forum) found that the Milwaukee area had 232 arts and cultural nonprofit groups in 2011, a number that increased by some 147% since 1989. Yet officials at the United Arts Performing Fund (UPAF)—a group that helps funnel donations to arts groups in the greater Milwaukee area—haven’t found a reason to sound the alarm yet.

Deanna Tillisch, president and chief executive of UPAF, said she has seen no data or evidence suggesting Milwaukee has too many performance venues. “The entertainment choices are abundant,” she acknowledged, “but the marketplace will ultimately decide if we have enough venues or too many.”

She said filling seats in performance venues might not be easy. But arts groups are not the only organizations that have turned to government subsidies and private donations for help with building projects. Sports teams, which are generally considered more popular than arts groups, regularly receive government aid for the construction of new arenas and stadiums.

Yet there are signs that giving to the arts is down in the Milwaukee area. In a separate report released in August 2015 and titled “How Much is Enough?”, the Public Policy Forum warned that the years following the recent recession had brought about a change in corporate and private foundation giving habits. Although donations from both sources have increased as the economy has improved since then, corporations and foundations have nonetheless shown a preference for causes other than the arts. Corporations, for instance, have been more interested in recent years in supporting instructional and workforce development programs.

The results of the shift can be seen in donation numbers. In 2007, the year before the most recent economic recession, the total value of corporate and foundation grants to Milwaukee-area arts organizations had topped $8 million according to the policy forum’s report. By 2011, when giving to other sorts of causes was starting to rebound, the total value of grants to the arts came in at only about half that figure.

Depth or Breadth?

Then there are changing tastes. It has been often observed that many young people have become indifferent to supporting arts institutions that their elders had taken as being indispensable to any place going by the name of a first-class city: professional ballet, theater, opera and orchestra companies.

This shift is one underlying cause of an ongoing local debate between advocates of “depth” in the arts and those who favor “breadth.” Those calling for depth argue that the Milwaukee area would be better off putting its scarce resources into cornerstone institutions like the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Florentine Opera and The Rep; advocates of breadth say that arts organizations should reflect the diversity of their patrons, however that diversity is defined. That is more likely to happen with a large number of organizations, since each can then be tailored to suit the preferences of a particular group.

The Policy Forum’s report notes that even as corporate and foundation giving is down, support from individual donors has been on the rise. But these sorts of donors also seem to prefer small organizations, perhaps because their money is perceived to make more of a difference at such places than at large institutions. Young people, too, are generally more enthusiastic about supporting smaller groups that cater to their own tastes rather than large outfits fitting older notions of what an arts institution “ought to be.”

Mathews, for his part, thinks that Milwaukee has no more of an overabundance of performing venues and groups than any other American city of comparable size. He may be right, but that doesn’t necessarily mean arts and cultural officials here have no reason to be on the edge of their seats.

“It is getting to be a more competitive environment,” Mathews said. “We are all competing for patrons’ time, and patron demand is eventually going to determine how many of these organizations are going to be able to succeed.”

News and Views

POLL

Sign up to receive the latest from ShepherdExpress.com and win free tickets to area events!

Email Lists

Arts & Entertainment

Ticket Tuesday

News and Views

Week in Review

Dining

Deals and Promotions

Shepherd Events

Email Address

By submitting this form, you are granting: The Shepherd Express, 207 E. Buffalo St., Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 53202, United States, http://shepherdexpress.com permission to email you. You may unsubscribe via the link found at the bottom of every email. (See our Email Privacy Policy for details.) Emails are serviced by Constant Contact.